Once For All
by Sweet September Storm
Summary: Esmeralda did not want to die. "One word of kindness, say one word, but one word!" That was all he had asked of her. But that word...was it too late? A much-needed alternate ending to 'Notre-Dame de Paris.' Claude does not return to the cathedral.
1. Nothing Left

Genius, story, characters and ability to make you cry is all Victor Hugo's. I own nothing.

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**Once For All**

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{**Chapter I**}

Nothing Left

_He uttered a violent cry, like the wretch to whom a red-hot iron is applied. 'Die, then!' said he, grinding his teeth. She saw his frightful look and strove to fly. But he seized her, shook her, threw her upon the ground, and walked rapidly toward the angle of the Tour-Roland, dragging her after him over the pavement by her fair hands.  
When he had reached it he turned to her:  
_'_Once for all, wilt thou be mine?'  
She answered him with emphasis:  
_'_No!'  
Then he called in a loud voice:  
_'_Gudule! Gudule! here's the gypsy-woman! take thy revenge!'  
The young girl felt herself seized suddenly by the elbow. She looked; it was a fleshless arm extended through a loop-hole in the wall, and held her with a hand of iron. _'_Hold fast!' said the priest; 'it's the gypsy-woman escaped. Do not let her go. I'm going to fetch the sergeants. Thou shalt see her hanged.' ..._

_Day began to dawn. An ashy gleam dimly lighted this scene, and the gibbet grew more and more distinct in the Place. On the other side, towards the bridge of Notre-Dame, the poor victim thought she heard the sound of the horsemen approaching.  
_'_Madame!' she cried, clasping her hands and falling upon her knees… 'madame, have pity!... Let me fly, let me go. Have mercy! I do not wish to die thus!' ..._

_Henriet Cousin…dragged the young girl out of the cell, and her mother after her. The eyes of the mother were also closed. The sun was rising at that moment ..._

_They pushed [Gudule] away with brutal violence, and it was remarked that her head fell back heavily upon the ground. They raised her; she fell back again. She was dead. The hangman, who had not loosed his hold of the young girl, kept on up the ladder._

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Dom Claude, however, had not retreated to the sanctity of Notre-Dame after rousing the soldiers. He felt an inexplicable force pushing him back the way he had come, back to the Grève. With no resistance left in him, he obeyed, as helpless as a child's leaf-raft on the surging waters of the Seine. Fate, it seemed, was not yet finished with him. He emerged from the shadows of the bridge houses as one bereft of will, a body without its soul.

"Proceed, Friend Henriet." It was the voice of Tristan l'Hermite. The archdeacon shrank back against the door of the nearest house as a big man in black appeared from the other side of the gibbet. He was dragging something white.

It was she.

At the sight of the young girl, life rushed again into the cold heart of the priest. All he had sacrificed, all he had suffered, all the words of love he had torn from his soul to give the gypsy only a quarter of an hour before, and all the hatred she had spit back into his face—_oh, the cursed, cursed name of Phoebus!_ it was all for naught. She was going to die. She was going to the noose he had prepared for her.

And he would have no choice but to watch. Everything in him desired to flee from the fatal spot; but, as on the first day he had seen her he was nailed, rooted to the ground. If anything, he took one step forward; that was all. His eye, burning and feverish, followed the movement of the executioner up the permanent ladder to the gibbet. The gypsy lay motionless, draped like a silken scarf over his shoulder. The archdeacon thought she was already dead.

~o~

Henriet Cousin lowered the girl to the stone floor of the gibbet, cursing the unmanly tears that started down his cheek at the sight of the heap of sackcloth crumpled at the foot of the ladder. At the contact of the cold stone, La Esmeralda opened her eyes.

"Ah, no!" she cried, raising herself on her arms and shrinking away from the man in black. "Save me, my mother!" She let her gaze drop and searched wildly for the woman who had been clinging to her. But her mother did not answer.

"Come, little one," Henriet Cousin said, endeavoring to approach her again. "Let it be done quickly." He motioned for his assistant.

The gypsy-girl stared at him in dumb terror, as if she had forgotten why she was there. A smaller man climbed up behind the girl, dressed in a matching apron of brown and gray. Without a word he encircled the poor prisoner's waist with his wiry arm and lifted her to her feet. Henriet Cousin pulled the rope from its coil on his arm.

"No! No!" La Esmeralda struggled against the hold of the executioner's assistant; she remembered her execution; she was frantic. "Let me go! I do not want to die!"

"It is the king's will." Henriet Cousin's voice faltered. But he stretched out his hand to the young girl's head, the fatal loop suspended from his fingers. "It is the king's will," he repeated.

At that moment, La Esmeralda let her horrified glance drop from the gibbet to the Place de Grève. A few people peered out of their casements; a few more stood watching from outside the ring of Tristan l'Hermite's men. They watched, unconcerned, as if the gypsy were a young heifer bleating in the butcher's stall at the market. Some hurried on their way without even raising their gaze to the spectacle on the gibbet. Another hanging would come soon enough after this sorceress was dead, with proper merriment all around. They would watch that instead.

But there was one in the early morning light that was conscious of nothing else; the eye of the priest never left the gypsy. He was hardly aware of the drops of blood that fell from his tightly clenched fists, so absorbed he was in the last moments of La Esmeralda's earthly sojourn. Once before he had believed her dead, and he had tasted Hell; now when she could not escape her fate any more, he wanted to be there. It would be his fate as well, he reflected, for when the soul departs, how can the body live again? La Esmeralda's death would banish the evil from his heart, but it would tear the good away as well, he thought. He would have nothing left. Soulless and heartless...Dom Claude would be more dead than she.

The gypsy-girl's gaze fell at last upon the priest, his rigid figure robed in black, clutching the corner of the house as if it were an island in a tempest. The archdeacon saw fury spark in those beautiful African eyes, but he could not look away. Though it pained him more than the searing knife-wound in his side, he could not look away.

The executioner's rope slipped over her head.

La Esmeralda cried out again, drawing her hands up to tear the hempen cord from her neck. She fell to her knees before Henriet Cousin as she struggled. "Mercy, monsieur! I beg of you, let me go!" she pleaded once more. "I do not want to die!"

But he would hear no more. "Get her up," he ordered the silent man in the leather apron. "Finish it."

The gypsy girl shuddered as she felt the man's hands on her shoulders again, but she had no more strength left. All was driven from her by the terror of the rope; the eyes she lifted to the archdeacon were filled only with desperation. It was the last earthly look of one condemned to die. Her lips moved faintly. "I don't want to die!" she repeated.

Dom Claude started forward like the drowning one to whom a life line is thrown.

La Esmeralda felt rough arms bear her to the center of the platform.

"Save me!" she whispered.


	2. The Spider and the Fly

{**Chapter II**}

The Spider and the Fly

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Dom Claude could hardly believe it. Time seemed to slow in its torrent around the figures of the gypsy and the priest, as if they were two upright stones in a riverbed. His pulse reverberated in his ears and his hands shook. She was looking to _him_, looking to him without hatred and loathing in her eyes. True (and the miserable archdeacon could not deceive himself in this) it was only in her extreme terror that she turned to him for help, but _still..._

At that moment, her beautiful eyes were for him alone. Not the wretched, thrice-accursed captain with all his airs and his fancy armor. Not even Quasimodo, so faithful and so ignored by them both. It was to _him—_Dom Claude Frollo, Archdeacon of Josas, priest of the Lord, gentleman, doctor, scientist; to _him_—apostate, assassin, executioner, demon...her gaze was all for _him_.

And it was enough.

Something inside the priest snapped.

"MALEDICTION!" he cried at the top of his lungs. "VILLAIN! BEAST! CEASE YOUR OFFICE!"

Henriet Cousin's hand halted halfway to the stone arm of the gibbet. He looked around for the source of the cry, muttering to himself. The little sorceress' death seemed intent on postponing itself as long as possible. "Who orders it?" he asked into the early morning sun, just peeping as it was over the rooftops of Paris. He squinted in the light.

A priest came forward from out of the shadows of the houses, arm extended, cowl flung back to reveal flaming eyes and a visage of adamant. His voice rose in a second cry of rage and desperation. "I am the Archdeacon of Josas! I forbid you to hang this woman!"

The gypsy-girl did not take her eyes off the priest as he spoke. The cord was knotted tightly around her slender neck, and she dared not move for fear of recalling the executioner's deadly attention. But she watched as the scene of deliverance unfolded before her, taking in each breath as if it were her last. Nothing was clear to the poor child anymore accept the gibbet and the rope; she could no more feel dread of the priest than that bell-ringer could hear his own voice. Death had at last looked her full in the face, and she was truly frightened. No fate was worse than the tightening of the rough cord around her neck—that was all La Esmeralda knew for certain. So she watched the priest and tasted the bitter draught of hope.

"It is the king's will," reminded Tristan l'Hermite, returning from the edge of the Place to hurry the witch's hanging. His men were getting tired of holding back the passers-by. He clucked his tongue at the priest. "You are too late, father. She is condemned."

Dom Claude did not know what he was doing. He did not know what he was saying. He only knew that one thing remained between the woman he loved and her marriage to the halter—his authority as a priest.

He could not fail.

"She remains under the protection of Our Lady, villain! Such sanctuary is not for you to trespass upon. Return her to Notre-Dame, or face the wrath of Heaven!"

Regarding the face of the archdeacon, Tristan l'Hermite shrank back a little. He wondered if the wrath of Heaven would look anything like the priest's expression; if it did, it was something most terrible indeed. He motioned for Henriet Cousin to hold for a moment.

"Father, it was not my choice to violate the sanctity of Our Lady. The sorceress' death is the will of our lord the king, and I must fulfill my oaths to him. She must hang."

A cold sweat bathed the brow of the archdeacon; his hands trembled even more violently and the sound of his heart rang in his ears like the bells of Passion Week. But he looked once again at the Egyptian in the executioner's arms and regained his center of gravity. Her eyes had not left his.

"She shall not, I tell you!" Dom Claude cried, and rushed at the astonished executioner, throwing him back against the gibbet with supernatural strength.

Tristan l'Hermite reached for his sword.


	3. Death Deferred

{**Chapter III**}

Death Deferred

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The hangman stumbled backwards at the force of the priest's blow.

"_Sang et tonnère!_" cried Tristan, drawing his bright blade. "What is this?"

"I tell you, she shall not hang!" said the archdeacon again. With his hollow cheek, fiery eyes and hand raised like the sword of the archangel, Dom Claude cowed even the hardened head of the executioner. Henriet Cousin looked to the commander, searching for permission to carry out his office. He knew the king had ordered the death of the gypsy dancer, had ordered her to be plucked from the sacred nave of Notre-Dame to serve her final penance upon the gibbet. The officer with his weapon leveled at the man of God had told him so. But so violent was the priest's expression, so full of fury and righteous indignation, that Henriet Cousin felt impelled by a force mightier than he to relax his hold on the young girl's shoulders.

La Esmeralda sank to the foot of the gibbet upon her release, tearing the fatal loop of the noose from her fair throat as she fell. But she made no move to run; the soldiers stood in formation, encircling the Place de Grève like so many wolves around the wounded body of the poor doe they longed to devour. The gypsy-girl could feel their eyes on her, all angry, cruel and hateful; eyes that had once been so full of laughter and approval when they watched her dance in the streets now only desired her death. She shrank away from the leather-clad hangman and his foul lackey, unconscious of the fact that doing so drew her nearly into contact with the priest. Terror of the grave gave her no room to hold any feelings for the archdeacon except those the shipwrecked sailor has for the raft to which he clings, and still wondering at any moment when the tempest will swallow them together. So she stayed silent, pleading with whatever powers were in Heaven to even yet spare her from the noose.

Tristan ascended the ladder as swiftly as a tiger sets upon his prey. Dom Claude stood unfaltering before him with eyes blazing, daring the soldier to hazard his wrath and gain access to the girl crouching in his shadow. A statue of guardian angel he might have been, so unconscious he seemed of the blade in the soldier's hand. Tristan swore and spoke again.

"Priest or devil, whatever you are, I command you to step aside! You would wish to defy the orders of the king?"

Dom Claude gave no answer. He was aware of only two things in that fatal moment, in which he had suspended not only the gypsy's fate but his own. On one hand there was the man before him, a commander of the king's soldiers, a he-wolf and monster, howling for payment of the awful price of justice with the voice of a carrion-bird. On the other hand was the trembling figure of the condemned girl, placing, as it appeared, the whole of her hope in the figure of the archdeacon. And to his fevered mind, the horror of the first was more than washed away in the intoxication of the second. All the wounds La Esmeralda had caused him, all the pain and hatred she had stirred in him for himself and Phoebus and the world—all was dissolved in that one sublime moment. She had begged for his protection; he would not deny her. Indeed, he felt in an instant that he would take on the king himself and all his legions of gorgon-faced soldiers—nay, the armies of Heaven and Hell together—for the sake of the gypsy-girl, as long as he knew she was watching him with yet a grain of trust in those lovely Egyptian eyes.

Mad he had been once, and in his madness he had brought her up to the gibbet; now he would die, and gladly, if it would bring her down again.

"Ho there! You would wish to defy the orders of the king?" the king's commander said again.

The archdeacon spoke at last, his words pushed through clenched teeth. "I see no orders from the king."

Tristan narrowed his eyes, perturbed in spite of himself with the priest's unearthly air. He straightened. "Do you not know who I am, Archdeacon of Josas? I am Tristan l'Hermite! I am the king's companion! I carry his orders in the matter of this gypsy witch. And she shall hang." Satisfied with his own command he stepped around the priest, signaling for Henriet Cousin to rise from the place he had fallen. The commander reached for the young girl's arm to pull her up.

But his own was seized in a grip of iron. Yet not iron—pincers of adamant could not have tightened so cruelly around the hairy flesh of his arm as did the fingers of the priest, preventing him from so much as touching the gypsy-girl. "She will not hang," Dom Claude whispered, ignoring the curses sputtered from the mouth of the king's companion. He raised his other hand to stay the soldiers of the company who jumped forward at the sight of their commander so assaulted. Bending again to Tristan's ear, the archdeacon forced every false drop of righteous authority he possessed into his words. "You will return to the king and receive his written orders for the execution of this woman. You will allow her to return for a time to Notre-Dame, and when you have presented at the door of the cathedral the order and the seal of the king, you will have the sanction of Our Lady to remove the gypsy to this place of execution." He released him with a snarl. "But until you have done this, you are the lawbreaker. She belongs to the Church." Dom Claude stood. "Now begone, you and your mercenaries."

The commander stumbled back, cradling his arm. If the man before him had been any other, he would have run him through on the spot. But a _priest_... Tristan l'Hermite was not so pious as to remember if killing a man of God counted as a greater sin than killing any other, but he did not want to put it to the test. Nor, at the moment, could he remember if the law required a written declaration of Parliament to condemn those under the eaves of Notre-Dame. He knew it was what the king desired, but there was no proof here to present the unyielding man of God—a man who surely knew of such matters better than he. He-wolf and villain as he had been called, Tristan l'Hermite, the king's companion, would never be accused of sacrilege. Biting down on the growl that strangled itself in his throat, he made a motion and withdrew to the executioner's side.

"You will see me on the steps of Notre-Dame by nightfall, priest." He raised his unhurt hand to point to the young woman and met the archdeacon's eye. "But she must hang. You will deliver her to me yourself."

The two stared at each other, defiant.

"Be it so," Dom Claude replied at last.

The gypsy-girl shrank from the words that issued from the mouth of her once-defender. Hope drained from her fragile soul and she fell to the floor of the gibbet, as cold and motionless as one already dead.

The commander sneered and motioned for his men to mount their horses. Backing towards the ladder, he marked again the eye of the archdeacon. "This night she hangs, priest." And with a final survey of the gibbet, so suddenly robbed of its intended, Tristan l'Hermite descended the steps and returned to his company. Henriet Cousin and his assistant accompanied him, and in a moment the Place held only the echoes of the soldiers.


	4. Equilibrium

{**Chapter IV**}

Equilibrium

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The priest stood as rigid as a man chiseled of marble. His fiery gaze was fixed on the backs of the retreating soldiers, and he did not breathe. It was only when the last of the armor-plated hounds had disappeared in the Rue du Mouton that he dared to release his breath, with heart pounding, stomach twisting, giddy with dread for the gypsy-girl. Of everything else he was unconscious; the sun had no light, the cathedral had no beauty, the city had no life if La Esmeralda was condemned to die. But with the departure of her executioner, he grasped at hope once more.

His eyes fell to the young girl at his feet.

But she was utterly senseless; cast down, it seemed, by the taste of death, La Esmeralda was white as the Hôtel-Dieu habit she wore.

And yet for many minutes, Dom Claude did not touch her, did not try to rouse her from her stupor. Ignoring the frightened glances and signs of the cross made by the hurried passers-by, the archdeacon was suddenly thrown back to the cursed day when he had first laid eyes upon the unfortunate dancer. He recalled in an instant every pang of jealousy he had suffered, every sleepless night, every tear, every despairing moment of wild delight when he had chanced to touch her, and every dagger she had plunged into his heart with the name of the captain. He felt the fire of the passion that had tortured him ceaselessly since that fatal afternoon branding its way through his soul once more, and he reflected bitterly upon its object--the young girl lying before him, so little, and yet so much!

Almost unaware of his actions, the priest knelt at her side.

_Beautiful._ She was still beautiful. His hands trembled at his sides and a tear leapt to his burning eye as he considered what Fate had driven them to_. One to condemnation, the other to damnation; one to the gibbet, the other to hellfire_... But at that thought, Dom Claude started. Had he not just saved her from the gibbet, from condemnation? Had he not just stood in the path of the great machine of Justice, tearing with his bare hands the precious life of his love from its ravenous jaws? And had she not given herself willingly into his protection? Said in a glance the words he had long since despaired on hearing from her lips? Was she not _alive_ because of him?

He stretched his hand to her forehead, unable to stay the violent shiver that shook him to his very soul at the contact. She did not stir.

"Girl."

She gave no answer. The priest let his hand fall and clenched his fist.

"Gypsy-girl."

The matin-bells had not yet sung out over the city, but Dom Claude marked the hour and the milling populace. His knife-wound burned through his cassock as he bent closer to the dancer, but he did not notice. The name had haunted him for months, occupied his every thought, his wildest dreams, his most horrible nightmares, but he had dared not breathe the beautiful word outside his cloistered cell.

"Es...Esmeralda."

The girl shuddered but did not open her eyes.

Believing himself to have plunged into a dream, Dom Claude laid his hand on her shoulder; the same shoulder he had that morning so cruelly thrown to the ground was now approached as something sacred, something too lovely for him to touch, something beyond his understanding. But he knew he must wake her, for he perceived Tristan to be a man of his word. By nightfall, if she remained in the City, he would find her and carry out the awful sentence.

"Child!"

La Esmeralda opened her eyes to behold the sun and the sky and the archdeacon above her.

"Ah!" She closed her lids again as if overcome. "Leave me!"

A spasm of pain flashed like summer lightning across the pale visage of the priest. But he recalled the words he had said to dispel Tristan and his men and understood her fear. He touched her shoulder again. "Child! I have saved you!"

She recoiled from his touch and sat upright. "You are a murderer!" she spat. "You…!" But he made a violent motion with his hand to cut her off, bading her look around.

"I tell you, I have saved you!" he cried hoarsely.

And La Esmeralda made no reply. For even as she looked, half expecting the horrid face of Henriet Cousin to appear alongside the priest's, she saw that the Place de Grève was empty of soldiers. Wildly, like a bird that thinks itself caught in a trap, she looked to her left and her right, and behind her. There was no one but the archdeacon and the early risers of the City milling through the Place.

"I have saved you!" he repeated, inebriated with the heady triumph of success.

The young girl only looked at him in dumb silence. She had been tossed between life and death a hundred times in the space of a few hours, and her child's spirit was weary of hope. She hardly dared recall the horrible things that had preceded her ascension of the scaffold—her original appointment with the rope, broken so suddenly by the bell-ringer, the long, calm months under the shadow of Notre-Dame weeping for the fact that Phoebus no longer loved her, the attack the night before, her escape at the hand of Gringoire and the archdeacon, her husband's abandonment, the priest's final offer…

Again La Esmeralda shuddered. Even the rapidly dispelling veil of terror was not enough to shroud from her mind the memories of her previous encounters with the spectre monk. The demon wielding the dagger at La Falourdel's, his confession of love in the depths of the dungeon, the horrible night in the tower of the Notre-Dame, and his words only that morning—all these things had not been forgotten by the gypsy-dancer. But first in her mind, and by far most powerful, was the fact that she sat _beneath_ the gibbet, and was not hanging that moment from its skeletal stone arm. She was alive, and the men who had desired her death were gone.

And as hateful as he was to her, it did indeed seem the priest was the one responsible for their departure.

The gypsy-girl's loathing for the figure of the archdeacon and her unknowable gratitude for life came into fierce conflict in her simple heart. At last she drew her feet under her and opened her large eyes. "I am not to die?" she asked in an undertone, remembering his promise to the commander.

Dom Claude wished she would never look away. "You will live!" She gave no reply and he continued, reaching for her hand. "But you must come with me now."

She withdrew from his touch. "You will take me to the executioner!"

"No! I swear I will not!" the priest cried, frantic to ease her fear of him. He laughed. "The beast will come to Notre-Dame tonight and find his prey has flown…gone forever!"

La Esmeralda remained silent, confused.

"But you must come with me, child. I have said that we will flee. We will leave this pit of perdition together and live once again in the free air!" Dom Claude stood. "Come, quickly!"

The gypsy-girl hesitated, eyes cast upon the ground. Her strength had yet to return—if indeed it ever would. Her successive submission to hope and crushing despair had broken her spirit more effectively than any of Pierrat Torterue's boots, racks or brands. Life was just barely beginning to flow in her veins again, so frightened had she been at the touch of the hangman and his rope. But still, above all, the battle raged within her between hatred for the archdeacon and love of life. When that morning she had said the gibbet was less horrible to her than he was, she had not yet tasted the dread finality of death. Now she had. And La Esmeralda knew she could not swiftly forget such a taste; it would linger in the back of her mind like a ghastly spirit for the rest of her life—of that, at least, she was certain.

The chill of the stones she sat upon drove her to raise her eyes again to the priest's. He stood above her, waiting, an extraordinary eagerness animating his features. His hand remained extended.

"I will protect you, child, I swear it," Dom Claude added in a quieter voice, her hesitation paining him every second. The blind trust that he had once seen in her eyes was gone. The heart of the archdeacon writhed inside him at the thought that she would reject him once more. He did not know what he would do if she did; he only knew that in a single glance the dancer possessed his body and soul more than he did himself. She had but to cast on him one final look of scorn and he would throw himself to the gibbet in despair.

But, as they would never be together in life, he would make sure they were together in death. Dom Claude would take the gypsy-girl with him.

The jaw of the priest tightened, the only external hint of his violent internal convulsion at the thought.

And still the girl said nothing.

"Hurry!" he urged. "We must leave this place!"

For a moment La Esmeralda dropped her gaze to the other occupants of the Place de Grève. Morning had broken full and beautiful over the dismal square, and the good people of Paris bustled about their business. Every few minutes a curious head would lift to observe the pair atop the gibbet, but eager gossip regarding the past night's uprising quickly drew it down again. The fair young girl looked once more to the man who offered her deliverance from the fatal contraption on which she rested.

"Why did you save me?" she inquired in an undertone.

Dom Claude lowered his hand and knelt before her again, eyes wild. His voice was hoarse with the fervor that rose inside him at the question. He had thought even the demons in Hell had known the reason he saved the gypsy.

"Because I _love_ you!" he cried. "I do not wish your death, child!"

"You love me?" Her voice held no emotion, as though she spoke only to repeat his words.

"I love you!" he said again.

"You will take me from this place?" she whispered.

"Yes! Yes! Young girl, I swear, you will never see the gibbet again!" He extended his trembling hand once more.

La Esmeralda did not know what to do. She hated the priest; she did not want to die. She wished to fly as far as possible from the noose; she did not want him to be the one to help her escape. There was not for an instant any doubt in her mind of the priest's unspoken conditions. He would save her, and she would be his. The thought made her shudder violently. But the battle inside her had run its course, and the two extremes had come to a loathsome compromise. Disgust, dismay and despair countered joy, hope and the sweetness of life in every way, leaving the dancer balanced in the center. It was, as Gringoire had once told her, an equilibrium. She had come to equilibrium.

So there was in her heart neither hatred nor love for Dom Claude when she gave her answer. She felt nothing towards him whatsoever.

But that apathy was enough to induce her to accept his offer.

La Esmeralda took the archdeacon's hand.


	5. Flight

{**Chapter V**}

Flight

* * *

Words failed the priest quite utterly as the fragile hand of the young dancer confided itself to his own.

To him, life—his and the entire world's—the whole of Creation and the very favor of God seemed to have been made for that moment.

Dom Claude forgot to breathe, forgot to think, forgot everything.

The gypsy-girl rose to her feet and looked about, timorous. The gibbet had been constructed well above the ground so as to allow the populace the best view of the public executions. And standing so exposed, barefoot, wearing only the simple evening habit of the Hôtel-Dieu, La Esmeralda was ill at ease. The priest had promised to help her flee; she wished to begin their flight from the accursed Grève without delay.

She took a step towards the ladder.

"You will come with me?" he said, her motion starting him out of his joyous stupor. His voice was no more than a whisper.

A look flashed across the girl's face that Gringoire, had he been present, would have fondly recognized. Though it had suffered with the rest of her in the agony of her near execution, La Esmeralda's pretty pout had not wholly forsaken her nature. It was presently dimmed by fear and impatience, but it was still there, hovering on her lip like a wasp before a flower.

"Swear that you will save me," she replied solemnly.

"I swear! I swear! On everything I love; on Heaven, on Hell, on whatever you ask of me—I swear it!" he cried, breathless.

"Then I will come." The gypsy-girl made her little grimace again and was silent.

The heart of the priest expanded at her words as he had never believed it could; he felt emotions stirring in him that he had not yet begun to fathom, so hardened had he been against the hope that the gypsy could love him.

_Then I will come… I will come… I will come. _Her words echoed in his ears.

Everything he had done, every transgression he had piled upon transgression, every foul thought and evil deed, his broken vows and trampled cassock—the priest had done it all to hear such words fall from her beautiful lips. He silently begged God for His pardon. Yet—was he not right in rescuing one of His own angels from the brute ignorance of human justice? For surely, he thought, the gypsy-girl rightfully belonged in the company of Heaven. Dom Claude's mind whirled. He had believed her once an emissary of the Enemy; how blind, pitiful and wrong he had been! This lovely creature, now abandoning herself for a second time to his protection, could only have come from the Beneficent One. Had He not, perhaps, sent her to earth for the priest's salvation rather than his perdition? The archdeacon could think no other way, so intoxicated was he by the gypsy's sudden acceptance of his hand.

"We... we will take the Porte Saint Antoine," he said in a daze.

The girl did not answer him. She withdrew her hand to descend the ladder, and Dom Claude felt as if the sun had slipped behind a cloud. He hurried to follow her to the pavement of the Grève. As before, only the boldest pedestrians cared to cast inquiring gazes upon the unusual pair—he in all black, she entirely in white.

When they reached the ground, the priest took her hand again. La Esmeralda grimaced and tried to break his hold, but she had not the strength. Dom Claude felt her resistance and halted, turning to her with a mingled expression of sadness, anger and despair.

"Ah! Child! You repulse me even now?"

She cast her eyes to the ground, unsure of her response. She would go with him, she _must_ go with him—but she would not suffer his company or his touch any more than was absolutely necessary.

"I do not want you to hold on to me," she said at last.

He released her hand.

The girl raised her eyes in surprise. She had expected him to turn violent, to storm, to insist upon her compliance, but he only looked at her with an air of profound sorrow. There was between the two a long moment of decisive silence.

"I will ask nothing of you, young girl," the priest said at last, heaving a bitter sigh and studying the hand that had been robbed of its precious tenant. He lifted his head, eyes burning with a strange fire. "But swear to me, as I have sworn to you, that you will not leave me!"

La Esmeralda was frightened at his expression and wished he had not asked such a thing of her. She bit her tongue, and was silent.

"Swear it!" he cried again, taking a step towards her fragile figure.

She shrank away and felt the rough stone of the gibbet brush against her back. At the contact, a shiver ran through her body, more terrible than anything threatened by the glowing eyes of the archdeacon. Lids half-lowered, her cheek as pale as a swan's wing, the poor dancer nodded her head once.

"Say it! Swear that you will not leave me!" he insisted.

"I swear, I swear it!" she murmured, defeated.

Dom Claude saw the effect his fearful mien had on the girl he loved, and it tortured him to think that it was necessary even then. But so powerful was the sway of her presence on his person, the priest felt that if she departed, after so cruelly allowing him to taste the sweetness of her company, he would certainly die of despair. And if making her swear was what it required to prevent her departure, so be it.

"Heaven will hold you to your oath," he reminded her, rejoicing at her promise and hating himself at the same time for playing so meanly on the poor creature's superstition. "Now come!"

~o~

The archdeacon led the gypsy-girl away from the fatal center of the Grève, in the direction of Saint-Gervais and the Porte Saint Antoine. His strides were long and agitated, and the girl struggled to keep by his side. All she had suffered in the past day had taken its toll on her body; though the rare bloom of her beauty remained marked in all her movements, the luster of her hair was dimmed and the skin beneath her large eyes was stretched dark and thin, like a bruise. The street's harsh paving stones did nothing to ease the touch of her bare foot on its surface, and she stumbled with increasing frequency.

But Dom Claude was, for a moment, unaware of his companion's difficulty. He had refrained from taking the gypsy's hand again to honor her request, but he nevertheless ached to touch her again, even if it were to simply brush away the sweaty strands of hair that fell into her face. With his mind occupied by the twin struggles of escape and restraint, he had unconsciously allowed his gait to increase, until, at last panting and exhausted, the gypsy-girl demanded him to slacken their pace.

He stopped short.

"Do not run!" she begged, grimacing.

Dom Claude's eyes fell to her unprotected feet, lovely still, though marred by the dust and filth of the street. He cursed himself for failing to notice before.

"Oh! Forgive me, child!"

La Esmeralda looked at him with unutterable reproach in her dark eyes, piercing the heart of the priest better than any swordsman's blade. "I cannot run," she stated at last, daring him to continue their fool's flight. When he did not answer, she lowered herself onto the well-worn stone curb with all the grace of a dancer, and continued her silent accusation.

The archdeacon met her eyes helplessly, ashamed. He had neglected to carry from his cell in Notre-Dame provisions for their escape; perhaps, so deeply had the girl given him cause to despair, he had never truly believed she would consent to flee with him. Yet against all hope, all fear, all dreaming, she had. And at the first test of his devotion, Dom Claude could not even provide for her a pair of sandals. He had about him a few Paris pence; that was all.

"Where are we going?" the gypsy asked. The disdainful pout had not left her lips.

"We must leave the city," he assured her. "And then..." his voice faltered. "Then..."

"You do not know." She stated simply what his silence implied and shook her head once.

"I know at least that you must be outside the city walls by nightfall," he returned, his cheek coloring at the child-like gesture of her disapproval. "But then we will be safe." An idea occurred to him suddenly, and he lowered his voice to keep his eagerness from the young girl. "I can support you, if you wish." He offered his arm.

But La Esmeralda stood, a flash of anger warming her pale face like lightning. "No!" she answered with emphasis. "Do not touch me, priest!"

He lowered his hand and stared at her gloomily, her words reminding him of their painful encounter that morning.

"I will walk." The gypsy added, quite adamant.

"Very well."

He gestured for her to follow, and together they continued down the Rue de la Porte Baudour, towards the Porte Saint Antoine and the edge of the city.


	6. The Education of Esmeralda

{**Chapter VI**}

The Education of Esmeralda

* * *

The mid-morning sun gilded the tiled rooftops of Paris in bright stripes of white and gold, but the streets were tinted purple under the shadow of the houses. The Rue Saint Germain, if it could be viewed from above, might have resembled a throbbing vein set in the surface of some damsel's fair skin; dark, vibrant, pulsing with the movement of the populace, the lifeblood of the city, and sending its narrow offshoots spreading at irregular intervals into the far reaches of the Town.

It was into this crowd that the archdeacon and his graceful companion plunged after passing the Gothic edifice of Saint Gervais. Dom Claude had adjusted his stride to suit that of the dancer, though in doing so they progressed without the rapidity he would have wished. But at every street corner his apprehensive eye darted into the alleyways and crossroads, dreading the fatal and familiar glint of soldiers' armor.

La Esmeralda continued in her reticence towards the priest, considering as she walked how cruel was the fate that bound her to the archdeacon. Her heart balked as she remembered what she had sworn to him, what he had made her swear. Unlearned, illiterate, and heathen as she was, the gypsy-girl's time under the eaves of the cathedral had not failed to impress upon her simple mind the strange majesty and power of his formidable God; and, credulous as her nature, La Esmeralda had taken Dom Claude at his word. _Heaven will hold you to your oath,_ he had said. And who was she to question his Heaven? It was _she_ who had sworn, _she_ who had entangled herself in the bonds of her oath. So she had only to blame herself for accepting the misery of the priest's company.

A sigh escaped her lips.

_Phoebus._

The young girl dared not say the name aloud within the hearing of the archdeacon, but she could not stop the revered syllables from reverberating through her mind.

_Phoebus._

What had happened since that morning that had driven him so far from her? The poor child did not know. Her love for the captain had nearly relinquished its throne in her heart, so powerfully and inexorably had the fear of death taken hold over her whole being. What remained, then, was not the love it had been before. It had changed, faded, grown even more dreamy and ghost-like. But it was still there.

La Esmeralda had not learned such a truth through self-reflection, as a man like the priest might have discovered it. Her feelings were far simpler, unalloyed, as it were, with the gloss of education and meditation. She only knew a raw desire to _see_ him again—her knight, her idol, her Phoebus! What she would do if they did meet, the gypsy-girl did not know. But he was the last human being alive to whom she had entrusted the fragile threads of her heart-strings, and that was enough. Clopin and the rest of her gypsy family lay slain in the Parvis de Notre-Dame, Gringoire had stolen her Djali, and her mother was dead. The captain was the last person on earth La Esmeralda cared for; towards the rest of humanity she felt only empty indifference.

"Stop."

The girl did not hear the priest, so absorbed was she in her melancholy reflections.

"Wait a moment, child!" he said again, making a motion to catch her fraying attention. She started from her reverie, marked him with her particular grimace, and halted. They had just passed through the Porte Baudoyer.

"Why?"

He let his eyes fall below the soiled hem of her chemise, to her bare feet. Conscience and his concern for her would not let him allow the girl take one more step unshod. He drew out of the bustle of the street into the narrow mouth of an alley.

"Here."

And the archdeacon removed his boots, placing them before the gypsy-dancer like a votive before the Virgin.

La Esmeralda did not know what to say. She had, in truth, hardly noticed her bare feet since they had stopped running. A lifetime of dancing on street corners in her open sandals had accustomed her to the feel of pavement; it was only the priest's eager pace that had defeated her before.

Her grimace deepened, but something—perhaps even yet a lingering spark of compassion—forbade her from rejecting the gift of the man so supplicant before her. She took the boots without a word.

Dom Claude wished he had more to offer the gypsy-girl; he wished he could pour out the wealth of the Indies to see her smile, but he could not. Yet the fact that she had accepted his present made the archdeacon's heart beat wildly with hope.

La Esmeralda did not need to slip her tiny foot into the leather article to know it would be too big. She frowned. "You will go barefoot, priest?"

He did not answer. "Hurry child. We must keep moving."

"You will go barefoot?" she repeated, persistent.

The archdeacon nodded once.

"I..."

But at that moment, a breath of wind happened to carry to the ears of the two fugitives the sound of chain-mail and horse hooves. As one, the priest and the gypsy turned their gaze towards the Porte Saint Antoine and the source of the disturbance.

It was a column of the king's soldiers.

The sight struck into the archdeacon's heart the chill of death, more dread and more effective than any poison-tipped arrow, for leading the column of archers—dressed in his regimentals and sporting his finest plume—was Phoebus de Chateaupers.

La Esmeralda caught sight of the captain at the exact same moment as the priest.

Time stopped.

Dom Claude could see at once, without a shadow of doubt, what would follow. The gypsy-girl would make herself known to the soldiers; thinking only of her Phoebus, she would betray herself.

Phoebus—that miserable, blustering _imbecile _of a man—would hand her over to the commander's men without a qualm. Then Tristan would fulfill his word to the priest; by nightfall La Esmeralda would hang.

And all would be over for the archdeacon.

His companion started forward with an exclamation of joy.

If the gypsy had thrust a red-hot iron into his heart, Dom Claude could not have cried out in greater agony. His hand flew of its own accord to the girl's arm, snatching her out of the street with the snarl of a tigress robbed of her cubs. He covered her mouth before she could make a noise, crushing the two of them into the little space made by a doorway in the alley.

"Silence!"

La Esmeralda struggled vainly against his unyielding grasp, as a nightingale might when pinioned in a fowler's snare.

"Silence!" he cried again, furious. "Do not say his name!"

The gypsy put her teeth to the hand that covered her mouth

"Let me go!" she shouted as soon as she could speak, eager to draw the attention of a pedestrian. But no one heard; they had all gone to watch the soldiers parade down the street.

Dom Claude did not release her, though he loosened his hold a little. As her back was pressed against him, the dancer could not see the tears that leapt to the archdeacon's eyes as she fought him, tears of rage, of jealousy and of sorrow. He tried to speak more gently, to disregard the gaping wound her fervor for the captain had opened in his heart.

"Child, he will take you to your death!" he warned.

La Esmeralda tore herself from his restrictive embrace; though the priest managed to keep hold of her wrist, she put as much distance between them as possible. Her eyes were blazing, recalling to her expression a hint of the hatred she had so recently abandoned for the archdeacon.

"I am not a _child_!" she cried. "Let me go!"

Dom Claude did not allow his face to show the pain with which her words afforded him. He refused to release her. "Don't you see?" His voice trembled with the force of his frantic desire to make her understand. "That man is a _soldier_! He will return you to the gibbet!"

"You lie, priest!" She strove against his grasp. "Let me see him!"

The archdeacon did not know what to do. He did not want to let her go; he did not want her to hate him again. But above all he did not want the dancer to be reminded of her love for the captain, to see Phoebus in his fine uniform, commanding his many men. Desperation and violent jealousy met together in his heart and agreed: he could not release La Esmeralda.

"Remember what you swore!" he cried hoarsely, drawing her out of view of the main avenue. "You swore you would not leave me!"

"And you promised not to hold on to me!" she countered. But Dom Claude felt her lessen her struggle against him. His aching heart steadied and his voice grew stern.

"I saved your life—I _am_ saving your life—and you wish to throw yourself back to the executioner?"

And as powerfully as the gypsy's simple soul yearned to see Phoebus, the priest's words did not fall on deaf ears. The chill of the grave had not been absent from her heart for long; the terror that had driven her to accept the archdeacon was still fresh in her mind. Dom Claude had played his trump well on the poor girl; even a desire to see her Phoebus was muted by the fear of the noose. La Esmeralda ceased her efforts to remove the priest's hand from her wrist and stared at him in silence.

Dom Claude knew the power his threat of the gibbet had on the girl; he knew it had defeated her. In an attempt to mask his victory, he eased his grip on the dancer's slender arm and allowed in his voice to take on a milder tone.

"I do not wish to harm you, child." His eyes fell to the hand he now held, and softened. "I want you to live."

The gypsy-girl made her trembling grimace and cast a sorrowful gaze to the crowd in the street. Their backs were towards the alley, blocking La Esmeralda's view of the marching soldiers. But she could hear the clinking of their armor and the tramp of their horses hooves echoing through the deserted byway.

"I am not a child," she said for a second time, distracted.

The priest blinked in surprise. He had only called her 'child' out of his reluctance to pronounce her true name, and of allowing its charm to hold too strong a sway in his mind. But if she _wished_ him to...

"Very well."

She returned her solemn gaze to the priest. "I want to see him," she said gravely.

"You know you cannot." He did not add that he would rather be torn to pieces in the depths of Pierrat Torterue's question chamber than suffer the foul, hollow-hearted captain to look on his beloved with his empty, lecherous eyes.

The dancer opened her mouth to answer him, perhaps angrily, when from the crowds gathered along the side of the street a cheer erupted. The king's archers were at that moment passing the crossroads of the Veille Rue du Temple, and the eager citizens of Paris had seized upon the meager march to supply them with an hour's entertainment. Young urchins from the gutter and lazy scholars joined shoulders with giggling housewives and cat-faced hags, each shouting and cheering in turn for the soldiers, the sunshine and the fact that they were not at that moment engaged in any worthier occupation.

But it was not to these spectators that La Esmeralda and the archdeacon turned their attention. It was to the soldier at the head of the column, the soldier towards whom their two hearts were so differently constituted, towards Phoebus. He was laughing, his crested helmet thrown back to reveal his insipid smile and wandering gaze. Yet his amorous attention was not directed to the damsels gathered on the street corners, as Dom Claude had expected. No, at the fatal moment, Phoebus de Chateaupers had eyes for one girl only.

La Esmeralda stared as one thunderstruck.

For it was to the window of an apartment that the captain fixed his gaze, and to the fair young lady that smiled and waved at the casement.

A tear of confusion filtered through the gypsy's soul to stain her adoration for the captain. It was followed by another, and another; then came a tear of envy, and then anger.

She had recognized the young woman, though her blonde, blushing head was nearly obscured by the heavy drapery. It was Fleur-de-Lys de Gondelaurier.

What passed in the heart of La Esmeralda at the sight of her rival was difficult to describe; indeed, even she did not know what she felt herself. But the emotions were poignant, vivid and painful. She remembered her first encounter with the girl, at the Logis de Gondelaurier, the same day Djali had so innocently betrayed her love for the captain. The insults she had heaped on the poor dancer's clothes, her manners and her person had smarted and stung, but La Esmeralda had borne it gladly for the sake of being near her Phoebus. But then again, there was the sight of the fair blonde hanging on the arm of the captain as the gypsy served her penance at the portal of Notre-Dame—and it was she who had pulled Phoebus away before the gypsy-girl could address him, with scorn on her lip and triumph in her eye. And lastly, there was the night the bell-ringer had waited for the captain at the step of the Gondelaurier mansion. He had waited without success, she remembered, because that same wicked woman had turned Phoebus' ears and eyes from her cries.

It was for her sake, the young gypsy-girl had finally decided, that Phoebus no longer loved her.

And here he was now, leading his men below her window while Fleur-de-Lys looked on, smiling, laughing, eyes full of adoration and desire, totally oblivious to the poor child whose heart was cracking in the alley behind him. La Esmeralda's lip trembled as she remembered the fatal night at La Falourdel's, when he had sworn to her his undying love and devotion, and promised to parade his archers below her lodging someday as a token of his favor.

Yet those words were not for her; not his Similar—oh, never for the little dancing girl with the goat! She could see that they were truly for the simpering beauty at the window, the gentlewoman, the high-born lady. The one La Esmeralda had never been able to replace in the affections of the dashing soldier.

And never would.

The gypsy-girl had thought she had known heartbreak. Her trial, torture and imprisonment, followed soon after by two broken appointments with the gibbet, had relieved her of her innocence in many ways. As she had reminded the priest, she was no longer a child. But her experience with death, as often and as close as it had come, had not the same pain as the very living agony of a love scorned.

It was a thousand times worse.

The effervescent veil in which the young girl had wrapped her love for Phoebus was suddenly torn wide open, mingling the purest contents of her simple heart with the filth and bitterness of betrayal.

La Esmeralda stood in the alley, her companion forgotten, and wept.


	7. Where the Sky is Bluest

{**Chapter VII**}

Where the Sky is Bluest

* * *

The archdeacon looked on as the gypsy-girl wept. He had not let go of her hand.

Two great emotions surged through his chest at the sight of his beloved's tears—one of deepest relief, the other of profound pity. Dom Claude knew for what she wept, for he too had seen and recognized the woman at the window. Who she was, the priest did not know, but he blessed her nonetheless for so stealing the captain's affections. Yet his love for La Esmeralda would not allow him to glory too brazenly in this unexpected victory over Phoebus. He knew, better than any man on earth, the intense and unrelenting anguish felt in the souls of those unfortunate ones whose love is not returned. It was a force that did much to shatter even the purest of hearts, the archdeacon reflected—his as well as hers.

But even yet, Dom Claude dared to hope that what remained of La Esmeralda's adoration for the captain might somehow filter through her apathy and deign to fall on him. It was a love soiled and tarnished at the brutish hands of the captain and his blonde beauty, certainly; but then, was that not what the priest deserved? He had no illusions of the gypsy's feelings for him; he knew that she stayed by his side only because she had nowhere else to go. But if he could just _make_ her understand the depths of his love, if he could prove to her the stretch of his devotion, if she could but see what he had sacrificed for her...

Dom Claude shook his head and stopped himself. He had done terrible things. He did not deserve her love; though he desired it more than air itself, he knew he was a fool to ask for it. He would content himself with her company; and, after time had begun to work its softening touch in her heart, he might allow himself to beg, as his adopted foundling once had, for a little pity from her hand.

The archers moved past the mouth of the alley, along the street in the direction of the Bastille, and the sound of their passing was quickly absorbed in the noise of the dispersing crowd.

No one noticed the white figure weeping in the shadow of the houses, weeping for the beautiful illusion that had come crashing down around her fair head at the sight of her once-beloved captain. The man in black went unnoticed as well as he lifted his saddened, grateful gaze to the Heavens.

After many minutes, the gypsy's tears ceased. "I want to leave this place," she said in an undertone.

The priest lowered his eyes. Her words came haltingly, painfully, as if every syllable had been powdered in sulphur. The gypsy-girl swallowed her grief as she spoke, her head turned away from the street and the fatal casement, at which a smiling Fleur-de-Lys still reposed. The archdeacon watched as La Esmeralda's expression hardened by degrees into the empty look of one who feels no longer.

Dom Claude released her hand reluctantly, remembering his promise. "Then come."

She followed him without a word.

The alley they had taken refuge in widened as it moved away from the Rue de la Porte Baudoer. At its terminus, the lane opened into the crossroads of the Rue de Jouy, and Dom Claude directed the gypsy to the left. The street was busy, and though no one stopped to question the pair, the archdeacon could see recognition spark in some faces as they passed. Though last night's uprising had captured the populace's capricious attention and wagging tongues for the moment, the priest had little doubt someone would remember La Esmeralda's execution and think to wonder why they had just seen her walking towards the city gate at the side of the Archdeacon of Josas.

But it was not the people Dom Claude feared most; to exit the city through the Porte Saint Antoine, he and the gypsy-girl would have to pass the iron teeth of the Bastille.

They neared the corner of the Rue du Pont Perrin.

"Wait a moment, ch-" he caught himself. "Esmeralda. Wait."

The dancer stopped and looked at him. The path of dried tears was traced deeply on her beautiful face, and she bore the marks of sorrow, weariness and heartbreak in her unutterable expression. But above all there seemed to hover, like an albatross over a storm-tossed ship, an air of resignation. La Esmeralda had suffered, but she was alive; she had decided that there was nothing else. She did not know where the priest was taking her, and she no longer cared. She waited for him to speak.

The archdeacon had yet to accustom himself to the sweetness of the girl's name on his lips. For a moment he wished she had not heard him, just so he would have the privilege of using it again. But she had heard him, and the urgency of his request would not allow for such lovers' trivialities.

"We are close," he began, and sighed. "But the road passes under the eyes of the Bastille."

A shudder, so slight as to be almost imperceptible, shook the poor dancer's frame like a breeze in the branches of a cherry blossom. It was the only acknowledgment she gave of the priest's words.

He continued. "Once we are outside the walls, you will no longer be condemned."

That was not wholly true, but Dom Claude was quite able to deceive himself as well as the gypsy-girl, for he too needed to grasp at hope. Carefully, so as not to attract the unwanted attention of their fellow pedestrians, he loosed the cloak tied around his broad shoulders.

"You must hide yourself in this."

La Esmeralda took the offering without a word. She did not need the archdeacon to convince her of the danger; the squat, somber towers of the fortress hefted their heavy bulwarks into the sky mere streets away. But beyond_ that_... Even the numb and violated heart of the gypsy-dancer swelled at the thought of breathing the free air once again. Though it had once been the joyous stage on which the gypsy laughed and danced and sang, Paris had since become a tarry pit of treachery that tried, with every step of her little foot, to suck her beneath its horrible seething mass. She knew there was nothing in the city that she would not be grateful to leave behind.

The young girl donned the archdeacon's cloak. Its black hood fell around her hair like a solemn halo and disguised the habit she wore from suspicious eyes. So attired, the gypsy presented the passers-by with a much lesser spectacle. Not a few Parisians had passed the dark-haired dancer in the street, and, dressed as she was entirely in white, wondered if they had seen an angel.

Dom Claude had not expected the gypsy to take what he offered so readily, though he did not question her in his delight that she had. He soon felt neither the roughness of the pavement beneath his bare feet nor the chill of the wind through his thin cassock; as long as she was with him, he could gladly face any hardship.

They continued towards the gate.

* * *

But what the archdeacon did not know was that at that very moment, in one chair-less and comfortless tower room of the Bastille, two men stood discussing the execution of the very girl that walked at his side.

One was Tristan l'Hermite; the other was Monsieur Louis XI of France.

Tristan had recounted for the king the events of the morning. It must be said, however, that his true object was not approached until he had assured the king in the most robust terms of the soldiers' success in crushing the riot against Notre-Dame. One does not prick the lion before presenting it with the slain gazelle.

"And you have left none of those ruffians for Montfaucon, my friend?"

"None, sire."

The ailing monarch paced a little while across the bare room, cackling like a fox. He spoke rapidly to himself.

"Maître Jacques must advise me how to instigate a proper revolt next time." He paused for a moment before the cross-barred casement and raised his frail fist. "Monsieur the Bailiff of the Palais will fall even yet!" He turned again to Tristan. "And not many of the company lost, eh? You had the bows of Monsieur de Chateaupers' men?"

The commander nodded gravely, still plying the good humor of his lord.

"A dozen, no more." He scratched his ear. "The hunchback-demon that lives in the bell towers took to pouring fire on the vagabonds before we arrived and the rest were little trouble." He significantly exaggerated the ease of their victory, but the king was not listening. He began to pace once more as his companion spoke. "The archers have even now returned from the Parvis, sire," Tristan concluded.

Louis stopped mid-stride and wheeled, like a man who has forgotten something of distasteful importance. His eyes blazed. "And the sorceress? She is hanged?"

Tristan l'Hermite found the unadorned stone floor suddenly fascinating.

"Not yet, sire."

The hollow cheek of the king trembled, and his good humor evaporated in an instant.

"_What_?"

"The Archdeacon of Josas forbade it, sire," he hurried to explain. "On the very gibbet, too."

"Ah! A priest!" The king's brow darkened. "And what did you tell this man?"

"I told him that it was the king's will."

"And very certainly it is!"

"He demanded that I receive written orders in the matter of the gypsy-girl..."

"Written?"

"...or 'tis I who am the lawbreaker."

"Of what?"

"The right of sanctuary, sire."

Monsieur Louis of France made a coughing noise like a hyena. "Harken here, my gossip," he said when the fit had passed. "Where is the witch now?"

The 'witch' was in fact, at that very moment, rounding the corner of the Rue du Pont Perrin, within sight of the Bastille.

"The archdeacon has returned with her to Notre-Dame."

"Ah!"

The king ceased his pacing and lowered himself suddenly onto the prayer stool by the window, as one in need of composure. His aged head bent to his chest until only the top of his greasy leathern cap faced the commander. For some minutes he mused.

"Will you sign her sentence, sire?" Tristan asked at last.

"She must die, certainly," the monarch murmured. "But how is it that a priest has more zeal for the sanctity of Our Lady than I?" The comparison chaffed him, and he rose again. "Well, he shall have his order, and the sorceress shall hang! The Good Virgin has already pardoned me this once. Go and have it done, my friend."

Tristan bowed. "The order, sire?"

The king made an impatient gesture. "See to it that Monsieur Olivier draws it up with all haste." At the thought of the accountant, his mood grew sour. "Now go, and be sure that this time she hangs."

Tristan l'Hermite bowed once more and took his leave. He was eager to see the end of the whole business of the witch. The gibbet had too long been deprived of its pretty prize.

* * *

Thus as the gypsy-girl's fate was decided in the tower above them, the two fugitives passed under the stone fastness of the Bastille. The Porte Saint Antoine was very close.

La Esmeralda walked with her graceful head lowered, desiring neither to see nor acknowledge the great fortress, an embodiment as it was of all the great and implacable forces that wanted her dead. What faint spark remained in her spirit wished only to pass through the bars of Saint Antoine to the wide sky and clean earth of the world outside the city walls. There, she had convinced herself, she could at least forget the horrors of Paris, of the executioner, of mothers slain, and of a love betrayed.

So with her eyes cast down, the gypsy-girl did not see the commander of the king's soldiers emerge from the mouth of the Bastille, riding out to deliver his fatal ordinance at the steps of Notre-Dame.

But Dom Claude saw him.

What dread icy death gripped the heart of the priest at sight of Tristan l'Hermite can scarcely be imagined. The commander would have but to raise his eyes and all would be over for La Esmeralda, for them both. No desperate wheedling, no priestly authority, no claim of sanctuary would save her then.

The archdeacon's eyes darted to his companion; she remained ignorant of the doom that rode so near.

Tristan's horse shied and protested shrilly as the great gates of the Bastille were locked after them.

The young girl looked up.

For the third time that morning, time stopped.

Dom Claude thought he had known agony. But in none of his sufferings had he approached the absolute terror of such suspension, such reeling back and forth between life and death. His love, his life..._his Esmeralda!_ Her fate was in a moment hung by a thread, as on the universal gibbet, over the bottomless pit of the grave. The archdeacon thought he could trace with his fevered eye the noose that Tristan l'Hermite cast about him in his glance, searching, searching, ever searching for the fair neck on which it would rest forever afterwards.

There was no proper name for the horror than took hold of Dom Claude's soul.

A second passed.

And another.

A minute.

And an eternity.

Tristan fingered the reins, sighed, glanced up at the bright sky, brushed away a speck from his mustache, and spurred his horse on. The dust stirred in his wake covered the angry pedestrians and inspired a volley of curses, but the commander ignored them all, bent and single-minded as he was on his errand. In a moment his horse had carried him around the corner and out of sight.

He had not seen the gypsy-girl.

* * *

_Relief._

There was no other emotion but relief. Yet—deep, ardent and inexpressible—it was the first feeling Dom Claude and La Esmeralda had ever shared. Together they were recalled to life, to the world; together they breathed again, moved again, lived again. In one instant—so fleeting yet so profound!—they understood each other in ways at once incomprehensible and unutterably precious.

No word was exchanged. Hardly even a glance passed between the two.

But they knew.

La Esmeralda felt for the first time the force of the priest's love for her, felt his fate entwined so inseparably with her own, so that even her terror of the hangman became his.

Dom Claude felt the icy wall of the dancer's apathy suddenly tremble.

It cannot be said that La Esmeralda ceased at once to harbor ill feelings for the archdeacon. He was still the man who had torn her from the life she knew, who had thrown her into the misery of prison, torture and the gibbet, who had taught her so cruelly the truth of false love and real hate. He was not the soldier she had dreamed of as a little child, with a sword and a beautiful uniform.

But neither was Phoebus. And in the end, Dom Claude had saved her life.

In the numb and empty chamber of her heart, La Esmeralda found a place for one only feeling. It was little, and it was weak, but it was there nonetheless.

She felt gratitude.

And her heart held room for it to grow.

They passed together through the Porte Saint Antoine, into the air, into the sun, under the blue sky. So suddenly was the filth of Paris behind them, Dom Claude might well have believed that the stone of the city wall served not as a barrier, but rather as a baptism for their weary souls. They had plunged through great grief and horror to emerge alive on the other side. The gibbet, the captain, and the cathedral were behind them.

La Esmeralda took the archdeacon's hand.

Neither one looked back.

_**Le Commencement**_

_The Beginning_


End file.
